Queen Elizabeth I

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QEI was a scholar by training and inclination (who wrote translations both as learning exercises and for recreation), as well as a writer in many genres and several languages. As monarch she wrote speeches, and all her life she wrote letters, poems, and prayers. (Some of these categories occasionally overlap.) Once her writing moved beyond the dutifulness of her youth, she had a pungent and forceful style both in prose and poetry.
Full-length portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, by the school of Nicholas Hilliard, 1590. Behind her two hovering angels prepare to crown her. She wears formal and elaborate clothes: tight blonde curls, a ruff, a stiff bodice, petticoat and over-skirt in intricate brocade patterns, deep lace cuffs, strings of pearls and several rings. A lengthy Latin inscription calls her an invincible virgin, mistress of all sciences, founder of Jesus College, Oxford, where the painting hangs.

Milestones

7 September 1533

The birth of Princess Elizabeth (later QEI ), at Greenwich, near London, almost nine months after her parents' secret marriage, was a severe blow to both of them because of her sex.
Neale, J. E. Queen Elizabeth. J. Cape.
13
Guy, John. “The Tudor Age (1485-1603)”. Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, edited by Kenneth O. Morgan, Oxford University Press, pp. 223-85.
251

31 July 1544

The precocious child who would one day be QEI wrote her earliest surviving letter, in Italian, to her stepmother Katherine Parr .
Elizabeth I, Queen. Elizabeth I: Collected Works. Editors Marcus, Leah S. et al., University of Chicago Press.
5-6

9 August 1588

QEI delivered the speech containing probably the most famous of her words, at Tilbury on the Thames estuary, to troops ready to embark against the Spanish Armada.
Elizabeth I, Queen. Elizabeth I: Collected Works. Editors Marcus, Leah S. et al., University of Chicago Press.
325

17 February 1603

QEI 's latest surviving dated writing is a letter to Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy (later Earl of Devon), regarding the Irish rebel leader, Hugh O'Neill, Lord Tyrone .
Elizabeth I, Queen. Elizabeth I: Collected Works. Editors Marcus, Leah S. et al., University of Chicago Press.
405-8

24 March 1603

At 3 a.m. QEIdeparted this lyfe, mildly like a lambe, easily like a ripe apple from the tree
Brett, Simon, editor. The Faber Book of Diaries. Faber.
(probably of bronchitis or pneumonia); James VI of Scotland succeeded her as James I of England.
Neale, J. E. Queen Elizabeth. J. Cape.
390
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Place in Succession

7 September 1533

The birth of Princess Elizabeth (later QEI ), at Greenwich, near London, almost nine months after her parents' secret marriage, was a severe blow to both of them because of her sex.
Neale, J. E. Queen Elizabeth. J. Cape.
13
Guy, John. “The Tudor Age (1485-1603)”. Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, edited by Kenneth O. Morgan, Oxford University Press, pp. 223-85.
251

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